Shift from Attracting to Empowering

One of the key shifts of our time is the shift from attracting people to empowering missionaries to go out. Spending money doing advertizing used to work. Today, it doesn't. Today we need to spend time mentoring people instead of licking stamps. So where does one begin?

First, you begin by internalizing that ministry is something that the whole church is responsible for. This means that you drop words like volunteers and staff and begin to think of everyone as a pastor potential.

Next you begin to realize that you must spend the majority of your waking hours mentoring and coaching the leaders of tomorrow. Such a realization will change your working habits. You will spend less time behind a desk and more time listening to people's hopes and dreams, guiding them to discover their gifts and/or interests, helping them to find their place in the overall Kingdom movement.

Next, you will quit counting the number of people who come on Sunday and count the number of people who: one, are beginning to be mentored; two, are beginning to serve; three, are actually preparing to go out into the world; four, are actually in the world making it a different place; and five, have begun the process of mentoring others so that the whole process takes place all over again and again and again.

Spend some time answering this question: "If I lived by these three paragraphs, how would my understanding of ministry change?"